Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers

Abstract

This volume gives a broad overview of the history of philosophy in France over the last century and does so with the ambition of correcting much received wisdom as to the general character and trajectory of its development. In particular, Schrift's aim is to correct what he sees as a widespread misconception, namely that French philosophy in the twentieth century really begins with Existentialism and that it functions more or less exclusively as a response to four German master thinkers: Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Hegel. To this end, Schrift pays particular attention in his account to areas which, he argues, have hitherto been ignored by many anglophone scholars working in the area of ‘continental’ or French philosophy. These include those specifically indigenous aspects of the French philosophical tradition which cannot be explained in terms of an appropriation of German thought, for instance, the inheritance from the nineteenth century of the two contrasting schools of spiritualism and positivism. The role played by French academic institutions also provides a central focus for Schrift's account. This double emphasis on the indigenous tradition and on the academic institutions of France shapes the book as a whole. It provides a key focus for the eighty page critical and narrative account of twentieth-century French philosophy itself, and informs the second, longer section, which gives brief biographies of a wide range of philosophers. Whilst the main narrative section and each of the individual biographies are relatively short, the emphasis placed on the network of institutional influences and inheritances which have shaped the careers of individual philosophers sheds valuable light on development of modern French thought as a whole. These two sections are supplemented by two helpful appendices, the first giving a detailed account of French academic institutions and their culture, the second an extensive bibliography of French philosophical works in English translation. Schrift's book is an important contribution to recent evaluations of modern French philosophy. His account of the role played by positivism, idealism and spiritualism in the early part of the century complements that given by Gary Gutting in French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (see FS, lvii (2003), 105), and provides the historical context against which many later developments in French thought need to be understood. In particular, Schrift gives an important account of philosophical developments within French academic philosophy which occurred during the period when Sartrian Existentialism appeared to reign supreme within wider intellectual culture. The importance of the epistemological tradition represented by key figures such as Bachelard, Cavaillès and Canguilhem, although ignored or marginalised in much Anglo-American reception, is given full recognition here. This, in turn, allows Schrift to mark key genealogical links between phenomenology and structuralism which are often obscured in those histories which emphasise the role played by structuralism in overturning the hegemony enjoyed by existential phenomenology in the post-war period.